Weaving Luck
by viggen
Summary: An unusual Aes Sedai and her Warder stumble onto a platoon of Seanchan capturing a young girl. Conflict steadily unfolds around a prize of Knowledge and Lives. Chapter 4 uploaded... stay tuned for Chapter 5
1. Chapter 1: Sculptor of Weaves

With apologies to Robert Jordan, whose books have occupied such a huge chunk of my time. I do not own any part of the Wheel of Time and the story below is written exclusively for entertainment. Admittedly, I do not know all the details of his complicated universe, so please forgive me for not having every nuance just right. While this is just another story about an Aes Sedai and her Warder, I hope anybody who reads it has fun.

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Weaving Luck 

Chapter 1: Sculptor of Weaves

By viggen

"Ghedlyn Sedai, do you think it's true what they say," Tavis mustered in his usual growl, "that the Dragon Reborn is now roaming the lands?"

Blinking several times, Ghedlyn paused as she walked her tall, dun-colored horse, Lorentz, then glanced distantly at her warder. Now that she thought about it, she had sensed the growing discomfiture of her guardian since they left that last village. The news stirred him practically to boiling. Confusing how the minds of some men turned over. "It would defy logic to guess," she finally decided, fingering her white fringed cloak. "It may be so. I do not know."

"But the Dark One stirs. Surely this unnatural heat is his evil. If the Dragon is in this world again," Tavis ventured, "should it not be time for us to return to the White Tower? Forgive me the suggestion." The thick necked bull of a man made it his duty to bring minutia to her attention. He wrapped himself more tightly in his stomach churning warder's cloak as he waited for her inevitable response.

The Aes Sedai walked a few steps before she properly deigned to answer. It could sometimes take Ghedlyn a half day to frame her speech and she spoke frequently in a monotone, "If the man of prophesy has arisen and is effecting this world, he will be drawing the countries to him to fight the last battle. This Age must be reaching its end. If I do not find insight into the steady state of the pattern soon, the upsetting of the age lace will make it impossible for me to finish my work."

Tavis lapsed into silence as he patted the black mane of his own horse, the aptly named Farstrider.

Ghedlyn was not tall as Domani went, with lighter skin than the usual brass and coal stained hair kept long, but bereft of style. She never noticed jewels or trinkets. Her almond eyes were big and far away, prone to distance and always searching. She lacked many of the seductive traits of her kin, both through her time in the Tower and through her distant nature. If she ever painted her lips, adjusted her hair or wore finer clothing, a vision of her would have set fits in the most chaste of man. But, her tan divided dress and baggy tunic rarely stayed clean, let alone rumple free and her white fringed cloak was threadbare from use. She would wear that set of clothing until it fell apart and probably not notice.

Since being raised to the shawl, Ghedlyn had never been as close to the interests of the Hall as most sisters and never fallen in well with the typical plans. Of her Ajah, often bookish and aloof as Whites tended to be, she far exceeded the standard. Her time cloistered away at her work, almost more like an obsessive Brown than a pondering White, had earned her few allies or confidantes and her not insubstantial strength with the power went frequently unnoticed. Her manner would never win a pivotal battle or sway a great ruler or negotiate some lasting peace between grave enemies, so she did what she always did. It had not been long before she simply strolled out of the Tower. Most sisters had probably long forgotten that one diminutive White, a silent doll perched forever in the corner, always watching.

In general, one White sister walking the world alone either demanded tremendous attention or was beneath notice, depending on whether that sister could be accounted fully sane.

Tavis grunted as she stopped in her tracks. He had grown used to it, since he had put up with it from the Aryth Ocean to the Sea of Storms, from the borders of the Blight and the Aiel Waste to the Mountains of Mist and well beyond. He had stood over her as she stooped down and glanced along the surface of a rock in the shadow of Kinslayer's Dagger, not looking at the rock, but tracing the texture of its face. He had crouched next to her as she sat fully clothed in waves at Illian, water lapping to her navel at the mouth of the river Manetherendrelle, eyes closed. He had stood by patiently as she stopped on the road to Far Madding, taking a step forward, then a step back and forward and back for a half hour without stop right at the boundary where she could sense the source, then not.

This time, it was a tree, as crooked as many things along the Blight Border. Of course, she did not know how long it had been since they left behind the edge of the Blight. Many interesting patterns there.

"Salidar is not too far that way," Tavis mentioned, by-the-by, "according to that message, some sisters were collecting there. If you believe the Tower is broken. Of course, the message was months old before we got it."

"Huh?" Ghedlyn had dropped Lorentz' reigns without a thought and walked up to the tree, head cocked sideways and jaw slack. She measured patterns on the bark with her fingers. Three by five by eight, steadily moving outward. The antisymmetry was in the roots, coiled and bundled over cracking dirt in the averse heat.

She stooped with a twig and began scratching in the dirt, sometimes casting glances up into the high stretching boughs. She never quite knew how quickly the array of sketchy symbols grew, a transform through a transform through a transform, from one function space to the next, pushing axioms forward and following repercussions as quickly as she could.

Tavis had come to stand over her quietly once again. He rarely made conversation when she went about her work -he had long since learned that she did not hear well when she found her muse. Ghedlyn did not know whether she sketched quickly or slowly, but only dimly realized that the twig had rapidly worn down to a nub. When the structure started to collapse prematurely, she scratched one line of equations out and applied another path of reasoning based on a different math. She bit her tongue while she worked.

Droplets of falling water pattered onto one symbolic furrow, filling it with water. Ghedlyn stopped her scribbling and watched. It was as if the logic itself had been dampened out. The dry ground hungrily devoured the wetness. More spots of wet appeared on the parched earth, circles that rapidly sunk in and vanished. She finally noticed the rain drumming down all around her, muddying her work. Ghedlyn blinked as she absorbed it. She had not realize that a spot of land twenty paces wide stood entirely cluttered with her scratchings. She had not noticed the tree of her inspiration grow quite so distant as she backed away on her knees. Falling water would soon obliterate all she wrought.

"So the drought has finally broken," Tavis said, baritone voice a reverent whisper.

Ghedlyn looked upward.

As always, Tavis had been there for her. Even as the rain began to fall, he had retrieved an oiled skin from a saddlebag and now held it over her, keeping the water away from where she crouched. How long he had been like that, she did not know. She blinked several times.

"How long has it been since rainfall?" she sat back on the ground, pulling in her tan riding skirts. She stared into the cloudy sky wondering where the rain had come from. Her question had not been asked quite properly, but she did not know how to retract it.

"It would be winter now," he answered, "it would be snow in the northlands, but the heat has been unseasonable. Maybe it has finally broken." He had both horses patiently by rein in addition to keeping Ghedlyn dry. "If you are finished here, we should find some better shelter, it looks as if this will be a downpour soon."

Ghedlyn leaned forward, poking her face from under the edge of his protection. Droplets of wet came down from so high, out of the stretching infinite swirls of gray, to plop onto her cheeks and nose. She squinted her dark eyes.

"Come on Aes Sedai," Tavis chuckled. He pulled the hood of her fringed cloak up to cover her head and gently lifted her to her feet with one burly arm, "a woman can drown staring upward into the rain with her mouth hanging open like that. Light knows I would be shirking my duty if I allowed such a thing." He draped the skin over her shoulders as added protection against the wet, then pushed Lorentz' reins back into her hands.

Fingers of lightning stroked to the ground not too distantly with great crashes as they began to walk again. Ghedlyn followed the squishing sound of her feet, from one puddle to the next. Dirt had already begun to form mud while the steady downpour deepened. Lorentz clopped ploddingly along behind her. Tavis did not protest their meandering course and only once complained about how soaked they were rapidly becoming. Otherwise, they continued in quiet but for the rain.

"That channeling," she said, stopping abruptly. She took down her hood so that falling water again washed over her head and face and down her neck.

"What?" Tavis had been looking at her. He mopped off his square chin with a thick hand and pushed trailing gray hair out of his eyes. "Do you mean the channeling to the south you felt a week ago?"

"No," she pointed into the rain. "Over there."

The expression on Tavis' face darkened. "It might be wise if we head another direction, then." He caught hold of her arm, slack against her side, and drew her off.

She looked over her shoulder as her feet blindly followed the burly Warder, gazing off toward the distant patterns. The weaves had an abbreviated, succinct style that lacked some of the polish of others she had seen. And she had seen so many. She once saw Wise Ones in the Aiel waste channeling when they did not know that she watched. She happened upon some Atha'an Miere Windfinders who came to consider her no threat and stood in amazement at the massive bundles of air they called down. Healers in the Mol Hara of Ebou Dar wove some of the most exquisite pieces in a blink, and become petrified to find an ageless face in their midst. Ghedlyn had seen so many types of channeling that any of her sisters would have been amazed. All her years away from Tar Valon had never been entirely aimless.

"It is different," Ghedlyn pulled her hand from Tavis' and stopped in her tracks. She squinted through the rain.

"Oh, light, I guess we go again, huh?" Tavis took the reins of both horses and doffed them into the saddles for easy access, though he did not tie the beasts up to prevent them from moving. Big black Farstrider and dun colored Lorentz looked on in that long suffering way, catching the Warder's mood and knowing they might soon have to run like the wind. Lorentz whickered a tiny protest.

The Aes Sedai and her Warder stood staring out into the sheets of rain, both soaked practically to the bone. The forest around them stood sparsely, filled with suffering trees and bushes on low, rolling terrain. Water beating down collected already into streams and washed dead earth into mud. Ghedlyn watched the weaves flung out, coming gradually closer. She could taste the women channeling to her bones. She blinked wetness from her eyes. Popping sounds and dull thuds reached them with an occasional flash of light.

"I hope you're certain about this," Tavis mumbled where he stood beside her. "I would hate to have to protect you from another trio of Myrddraal. Or another pack of veiled Aiel, for that matter. That your skin is in one piece continuously amazes me."

"It is different," Ghedlyn repeated. "Three channeling," she counted. "Or is it five? Two have bent phase in their weaving in a way as if they are linked. Sophisticated, but... anisotropic? It feels stilted, but it is new. I have not seen it before. One is wild, maybe unused to the source. Potentially very strong. All three are having difficulty with _Saidar_."

"Aes Sedai, you told me two days ago _Saidar_ was behaving differently. That it made you a little sick. This is foolhardy business if you can't make your one defense work properly. Please tell me you've seen enough." Tavis flexed an elbow to loosen it and rolled his shoulder. He tensed his forearms beneath his steel bracers, the only armor he wore.

"_Saidar_ behaves perfectly if you listen to its flow," Ghedlyn muttered consideringly. "It became destabilized in this area maybe a week ago."

"Whatever you say," Tavis responded, "I'm just a bit more worried about right now. We should at least try to hide ourselves, if not the horses."

Ghedlyn continued to stare out into the rain. She could hear the noisy scrunching of weary feet churning through mud. One of the pursuers looped out a weave of Earth and exploded the wet ground, eliciting a frightened squeal and panicked splashes. Tavis readied himself at that. Ghedlyn only knew what had happened because she could sense the weaves. She tasted _saidar_ with such intensity that she need not always see a weave in order to tell what exactly it did; she smelled it and tasted it, heard it and touched it with every aspect of her senses to such a degree that it permeated the world around her even when she did not embrace the source.

A slender girl no older than early teens staggered out of the sheeting rain from behind the rise of a shallow hill. Ghedlyn could see that she wore only rags and was caked in such a layer of muck that she might have been mistaken for infant trolloc. She struggled into a limping, exhausted run, headed desperately toward a row of trees with huge gnarled roots. A carefully placed lightning bolt struck down from the sky and clapped through the first tree in the stand, forcing the girl to turn aside. The girl flung up her hands to protect her head against the shower of seared bark and ruined leaves.

Ghedlyn cringed at the thundering sound of the lightning stroke.

The exhausted youngster skidded to a stunned halt when she noticed Ghedlyn and Tavis. Then she ran toward them as if her life were about to end, "Help me please! Help me!"

"Now you've done it," Tavis exclaimed under his breath, "we're in it for sure."

Ghedlyn blinked several times, uncertain what to do. She hadn't quite expected this. Her only interest was in the weaves and the weavers.

"As long as we're here," suggested Tavis, "we should help the poor kid."

"I see," the White Aes Sedai nodded nervously, "yes. I see."

Huge men in lacquered armor burst over the shallow hill. Adjusting his insect shaped helmet, one dove for the fleeing child and landed on his breast plate in the mud. The girl changed her tact with a shower of spraying filth at the last second to avoid being tackled. Another leaped past his companion and got one hand on the girl's disheveled clothing as he skidded nearly onto his bottom. The girl tripped and fell, but barely scrambled free. A woman in a blue dress with red panels worked in forked silver lightning bolts came from behind the hill brandishing a length of silver that had a circlet on the end. She was followed by another two men in the strange armor.

"If we plan to help her," Tavis said, starting toward the men and girl in an unconcerned walk, "now is the time." He did not swagger or run, just walked at an appraising pace.

The man who dove onto his belly lifted himself and lunged from his knees to grab the girl by the ankle. She screamed piercingly as he brought her down. Ghedlyn grimaced and held her ears. The woman in the blue dress vaulted over the warrior holding the girl and straddled the poor child who squirmed and struggled. She brought the silver manacle to the child's neck.

"No! NO! NO!" the girl shrieked as if the metal would burn her on touch.

"Be calm child, this will be over soon," the woman drawled, then spat, "curses, I might as well collar a snake."

"I think she has other things in mind," Tavis grabbed the woman one handed by the neck from behind and dragged her bodily off the girl in the mud. With his free hand, he snapped the manacle she held smartly around her own neck and dropped her, "let us see you wear it instead."

When the warder let her go, she collapsed to her knees with a surprised look on her ghostly pale face. To Ghedlyn's amazement she keeled forward and began to vomit violently into the mud. Tavis completely ignored her.

As if he had all the time in the world, Tavis stomped down hard on the wrist of the man who held the girl and pulled her out of his grasp. The man refused to yelp, though he grimaced in pain and stared up angrily at the warder, "How dare you interfere!"

"Maybe I failed to step on you hard enough," Tavis quipped, flipping his color shifting cloak. "Go wait over there," he pushed the girl toward Ghedlyn.

"He is one of these warders we keep hearing of!" the other warrior in green armor made it back afoot, "bring the _damane_! We found another _marath'damane_, Seilara!"

"Ghedlyn," Tavis hunkered down slightly and opened his arms wide, as if awaiting an embrace from one of the four warriors he faced, "now might be a terrific opportunity for you to dump the bricks out of your shoes."

Wide-eyed, Ghedlyn quaked where she stood like a tree in high wind. The girl, scrabbling and falling to her knees, dove to hide behind her. Ghedlyn did not quite know what to make of the child's tears.

"Ghedlyn?!" Tavis turned slightly.

The fighting men in the strange armor unsheathed wickedly curved swords. One drove at the warder in the space of a breath, blade probing cleverly. Tavis never seemed a very quick man. He never cared to move much faster than Ghedlyn's eternally lazy pace and rarely exuded any urgency. Instead of leaping aside as any other fighter might, he stepped right in on the blade to meet it, catching it with the worn steel of his bracers. He slid the bracer down the blade until he could snatch the hand clenched at the hilt. He barely seeming to move as he flowed in under the arm and wrenched every joint his hands crossed along the way. A split second since he began the attack, he stepped through the man's crumpled knee, then bent him over backward by the throat. Tavis let the dead man fall without a sideways glance. No wild kicks like an Aiel, no darting steel like a Borderlander, just smooth, well timed, and lethally effective.

The three remaining soldiers thought to overpower the warder even as their comrade fell. Tavis turned a step and spun right through their midst, hardly maneuvering more than a hair to avoid a glittering edge there or an elbow here. His bracers sparked as they glanced aside swords which never quite seemed to reach him. He could fight all day without ever breaking a sweat, never hurrying or extending past the slightest movement, never out of balance or beyond range. The art was old and desperately uncommon, he once told Ghedlyn, though no less frightening to witness.

One man fell, neck opened by a sword stolen from his companion and already discarded. The next flipped onto his back and doubled around the warder's boot on his throat. The last made a feint with his sword and kicked to the burly warder's head with a blindingly quick foot. Tavis glanced the blade aside with a bracer and stepped inside the radius of the kick. He brushed the leg past his body, flipped the man clean around with a sweeping arm, pinned one leg to the ground with foot, and forced the former kick straight up into the air with a strategically placed palm. The green armored fighter ended up sprawled unmoving with his head under the warder's boot. Tavis did not linger over his handiwork. "Not quite the Aiel," he grumbled disappointedly to himself and flipped rain water from his colorshifting cloak.

"Archers, _damane_!" more insect helmeted soldiers had emerged into the clearing.

Another woman with a blue dress that had red panels marked with lightning bolts stood at the lip of the low hill looking down at them, "Is that a Shara fist? We did not expect to find such in this part of the world," she drawled in difficult speech. "No matter, it has its weakness. You might have walked away had you simply left us the girl. Still, with the _marath'damane_ cowering behind you, it is unlikely. Kitti."

A woman in a gray dress cowered at her side. The two were linked by a silver leash that ran from the throat of the woman in gray to the wrist of the woman in blue.

"Not good. Ghedlyn," he hoarsely barked, "were you planning to let me die out here?!"

Ghedlyn gave herself a shake. "Interesting asymmetry," she murmured as the woman in gray embraced the source. The woman in blue seemed almost to be guiding it. The ground erupted in a thunderous boom with Tavis diving aside by a hair. She almost didn't notice the other woman still behind the hill who also opened to _saidar_. She nearly dropped to her knees in fear.

"Ghedlyn!" Tavis shouted at her as a woven blast of air slammed him flat to the ground.

A shield weave flew toward her. Ghedlyn's eyes widened at the structure, though almost too late. The sweetness of saidar came to her in the gust of a breath. She channeled a single spirit thread which she darted out and tied into a pattern on the thing reaching to ensnare her. She tied it off, "Maybe next time a little to the left," she mumbled around a swollen tongue.

"Mistress!" the woman in gray cried as if bitten. The shield weave crumpled on itself but refused to come undone, draped out like a paralyzed limb from its creator.

"Shield her!" the woman in blue pried into the gray, forcing out another shield, then another. Their synergy was more dazzling than two linked sisters.

With eyes the size of saucer plates, Ghedlyn addressed each weave in turn. She nipped with tiny spirit flows that she tied into every shield coming her way. "Right there? No. There? Um..."

In moments, both women channeling at her were struggling under the effort of simultaneously maintaining multiple weaves. They could not release the weaves they had already made! The woman behind the hill wailed in exhausted misery.

"It is an interesting asymmetry," Ghedlyn said as she stared at the extended weaves, her voice quivering, "may I see it again?" The style of channeling was not quite like any she had seen before.

"Now is probably not the time," Tavis lifted her and dumped her unceremoniously on her horse. "Would you do something to keep the soldiers off? Please?"

She fixated so strongly on the weaves, she failed to notice Tavis flooring two more of the warriors with insect helmets.

"Maybe if I..." Ghedlyn pondered.

"Now would be best."

"Um..." with all her strength, Ghedlyn wove earth to air to water into a tied off construct weave and dropped it into the ground. As an afterthought, she channeled threads of spirit and fire to link the weaves still extended from the two gray dressed women into her construct. It would last longer that way, she thought.

Tavis tossed the girl onto Farstrider's saddle and the blue dressed woman with the circlet around her neck ahead of Ghedlyn on Lorentz. He swung up behind the girl. "Go! Before they flank us!" he shouted and heeled Farstrider forward. A smack to Lorentz' rump brought the dun along with him.

Ghedlyn's weave unmeshed itself as they galloped away and changed the mud into something approaching stone, the soldiers' feet stuck within it. "Too much," she whimpered to herself as the effect spread steadily outward behind them and changed falling rain into snow.

She blinked several times sharply.

----

"One of these _marath'damane_ who calls herself Aes Sedai and her warder?" Seilara tapped a finger nail with the tip of her dagger blade. She had close cut black hair and wore armor not too different from that of her men, "And they took down or disabled ten regulars, three _sul'dam_ and two _damane_?"

"One of those _sul'dam_ remains unaccounted for, commander," the guardsman lowered his insect helmeted head to avoid her gaze. His failure made him more than respectful. If he had been Deathwatch Guard, he would have met her levelly even then. But, if she had one Deathwatch Guard, maybe this catastrophe could have been averted.

"All over a single _marath'damane_ child we were tasked to bring back by a member of the Blood? Another victory for the Ever Victorious Army. At this rate, we may all end up sold."

The guardsman bowed lower.

"Seilara," the blond _sul'dam_, Eashin, dipped her head, "this new _marath'damane_ could be valuable. If we find and collar her, we will be rewarded. The channeling she used when we tried to shield her was unique -the first of its kind I have ever seen. Kitti and Ura are both suffering from exhaustion, we could not make them channel another wink if we stripe them to within an inch of their lives. It will take them days to fully recover. Nobody has ever used that defense before. Such knowledge would be a powerful asset to the _Corenne_."

"It could prove a helpful consolation," Seilara agreed, "but that does not alter which _marath'damane_ the Blood sent us to retrieve."

End Chapter 1

This story is copyright Greg Smith 2005

Please do not use any part of it without my permission.


	2. Chapter 2: Pseudolink

On blackmail: yup it is rightly gratuitous. I apologize for that! I'm not that frequent at fanfic, this is my first since 2002, and my first one posted to WOT... it dismayed me that decent pieces of work un-updated for months had no reviews at all. The reason I ceased writing FF before was because I thought the community callous and I did not like it. Still, other less experienced writers benefit from having people with years of experience around. Now that I'm sure at least one person is reading, thank you very much and please read on. As long as I know I have one reader, I will finish this story. Forgive me my paranoia.

On Ghedlyn: I did toy with the idea of making her a Brown. However, her history dictates otherwise. In reality, the qualities ascribed to a White are required side-by-side with the qualities of a Brown... otherwise, the true scientist is incomplete.

Again, I do not own any of the Wheel of Time and my story is in greatest respect and admiration for Robert Jordan.

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Weaving Luck 

Chapter 2: Pseudolink

By viggen

The two horses galloped and skidded in the increasing mire, headed as quickly as possible in any direction away. Unseasonable heat, now broken by squawling rain, winnowed down the formerly lush landscape until it became starkly passable. This far south, wilting trees horribly yellowed spoke of the drought so recently past. The two horses labored in breathing through the cutting wet, prancing over rolling hills and across newly revived streams. Recently solid footing had become treacherous.

Tavis kept a close eye on their path in addition to his ward. Ghedlyn never proved her mettle as an athlete and frequently made spectacular falls from the back of her horse. The last such ride, she managed to spill herself before a fist of hungry Trollocs at full sprint. Not the most auspicious fumble for an Aes Sedai to make. She spent the first hours of this flight trying to properly lodge her skinny feet in the stirrups and she bounced around so violently that she would probably be limping for days. Tavis had already caught her twice before she bucked free of the saddle when Lorentz leaped across the currents on a swelling river. Tavis could sense her mortal fear and confusion wrapped up in a ball in the back of his head. He drew the horses back to a walk twice for as long as he thought prudent, resting them before continuing on, hoping beyond hope that his Aes Sedai would calm herself back to full lucidity. The drumming rain prevented clear conversation and he doubted Ghedlyn could manage it even if she heard him. Of all the Aes Sedai he had met and served in his considerable career, none had needed warding as much as this tiny woman.

The girl they saved from the rabble of soldiers and strange channeling women clung white knuckled to his saddle in a muddy lump. She had not spoken a word but for when they first started out, and only then to ask, "Is that an Aes Sedai?"

Tavis flicked the reins and heeled Farstrider, then answered, "She wears the ring, yes."

She made no further comment, though Tavis sometimes thought she might be crying. Difficult to tell under the deluge of rain.

The blond woman in the blue dress with the silver collar around her neck made even less of herself than the girl with Tavis on Farstrider. She lay across Lorentz' saddle ahead of Ghedlyn like a sack of flour, not stirring in the slightest. While they rode, he brought Farstrider close beside Lorentz to check, thinking she might be dead, but found her pinched blue eyes open and blinking. He wondered what could possibly have happened to sap her will for struggle. He wished he knew what she said when she fell. After seeing the women in gray, he had his suspicions about the leash, though he could not be certain. So many questions to ask in so little time.

He did not like it at all; the fewer conflicts in which Ghedlyn ended up embroiled, the better for everyone involved. Romanda Sedai had made his duty perfectly clear. One day, they would need to return to the White Tower, to be sure. If only that choice were his to make and not Ghedlyn's. They two would continue along her meandering path until that sometime day finally came. As long as he could protect her, he would be there for her.

With the torrential downpour, at least he did not have to worry overly much about leaving tracks. Runnels of water up and down slopes deepened to gulleys in the face of the worsening flood. The horses labored across fresh swales, leaving behind no signs that might telegraph a heading. Tavis wondered if the creator were not drowning the world in effort to start anew.

When darkness finally began to fall, Tavis found a shallow recess in the lee of a hill that looked relatively dry and drew rein. He dared not risk Ghedlyn crashing through a thick branch in the dark, or some other painful mistake he knew she might commit. In his experience, a warder's greatest enemy was benign carelessness.

He helped the girl to the ground, then began to set up a camp. Soon, he had Ghedlyn settled by a small fire and set about hobbling the horses. The woman in blue lay in a fetal position in the deepest part of the hollow, shivering. The young girl helped him bring saddle bags off the horses, her eyes still downcast. He staked up a large skin from the side of the hill to give them added shelter -a small comfort in the monumental rain. For a time, he considered asking Ghedlyn to set wards or weave a cloak of light, then thought better of it.

Ghedlyn caught him as he dropped down to sit by the fire. Her dark brown eyes could not quite meet his, though her beautiful lips worked as if she wanted to ask a question. She drew his color shifting cloak aside and pressed her palm into a gap in his tunic. He tensed his thick jaw, but counted the wound nothing; he had seen worse getting her through in the Aiel war. Her touch met fresh blood. No surprise that she had noticed.

"It is not logical..." she muttered, "not logical." Her quaking fingers probed the wound and she tilted her head to the side and blinked.

Tavis gasped aloud when an ice cold shock flooded through him, reaching from the balls of his feet in a swelling to the top of his head. "The wound is not..." he breathed out as she released him. He swore to himself not to regret the hunger he knew would come later, "Thank you."

She vaguely nodded, drawing back in shivers, never once looking him directly in the eye. Her head turned side to side in a darting motion and her lips moved momentarily, though no words came out. She drew her legs in until she sat with her chin resting on her knees. He sensed her fear ease somewhat, though her tongue might remain planted yet for hours.

He patted her on the shoulder and cringed when she twitched, "Please get some sleep, and try not to think about what happened. We will get through this."

Ghedlyn stared into the fire without moving.

The muddy girl crouched across from Tavis, watching the Aes Sedai holding her knees to her chin.

"She has the ageless face," the girl exclaimed softly, "but she does not look like any Aes Sedai I have ever seen."

Tavis grunted a short laugh, "Forgive me, I do not have the pleasure of your acquaintance."

"Maray," the girl supplied. Her bright green eyes were still red from tears, but she spoke solidly. The strength in her appeared plainly on her face, even covered as it was in mud.

"Tavis," the warder responded, "she is Ghedlyn Sedai. You will have to forgive me, Maray, I am afraid we have little in the way of comfort to offer you."

"More than usual," the girl shrugged. She looked as if she were used to the hollow boniness of an empty stomach.

"Well and good," he nodded, adjusting his bracers. "Now, will you please tell me what my lady and I have stumbled into."

Maray divided a long gaze between Tavis and Ghedlyn, hesitant on moving her attention from the Aes Sedai. "You do not know of the Seanchan?"

"Should we?" Tavis looked at her sideways, "Ghedlyn Sedai and I don't often visit towns or villages or larger cities. Any news we receive at all is generally sorely out of date."

"That woman!" Maray suddenly snapped, thrusting a mud encrusted finger at the blond woman with the collar. "Bloody Seanchan _sul'dam_!"

Ghedlyn jumped at Maray's outburst and squeezed her eyes closed.

"Oh ho," Tavis nodded to himself, wondering if bringing this... Seanchan... along had been such a good idea. He had been hoping for information rather than further complications. Once you landed in a fire, there generally was no way out but through. He immediately decided that Maray lacked compatibility with their other guest.

"Took my sister away, stupid daughter of a goat!" the dirty young girl shouted shrilly, tears streaming from her bright green eyes and over the smudges on her cheeks. She sprang fiercely to her feet and kicked the prone woman in the side as hard as she possibly could. With a grunt, the Seanchan woman doubled herself more completely into a ball. Her back began to shiver. Maray already wound up for a second kick before Tavis sprang over the fire and lifted her away from the woman with his thick arms. "Lemme go! She deserves it!" Maray immediately began to struggle against him.

"Please, hold on," the warder begged the girl, "I brought her here because I thought she might need help."

The muddy girl continued to struggle against him by flailing into his shins with her heels, "In the middle of a fight where you killed like five of her friends, you thought she needed _help_!"

"Something very strange happened when I locked that collar around her throat," Tavis explained calmly. "When I picked her up, she would have bit me and kicked me like a feral animal. But, then I locked the collar onto her and I felt her fighting spirit flee. I've never felt anyone fall into despair so quickly. That thing is some form of _ter'angreal_, I would wager, and I have a duty to make certain it finds its way to responsible hands at the White Tower. At the very least, I have to find out what this woman said as I dropped her."

Ghedlyn watched them in bewilderment. Tavis felt something from her not unlike a dawning revelation, as if she verged on becoming inspired. She stared unblinking at the blond woman, stared at the length of delicately worked silver attached to the collar on the woman's neck.

Maray finally relaxed enough for Tavis to let her feet back to the ground, "She would put that collar on your Aes Sedai's neck without a second thought. She deserves to be staked out in the rain."

"This woman is a soldier," Tavis said, "I know soldiers when I see them. You have to forgive soldiers for following orders. No one deserves to be staked anywhere over fighting for what they believe in. Will you give me your oath that you will not strike out at her again?"

"She bloody well deserves it," the girl insisted.

"I will not release you until you give me an oath."

Maray humphed in annoyance, "I swear on the Light not to kill her now."

"Not hurt," Tavis prompted.

"And I also swear not to hurt her," the girl droned, "happy now?"

Tavis carefully let her go, "I hold you to your word. If you break it, I will not hesitate to stake _you_ out in the rain."

Maray glowered at him, but nodded. She wrapped her arms around herself and started to sit, glaring emerald daggers at the back of the woman lying nearby. For the first time, Tavis really looked at her. Her patchy clothes hung loosely over too skinny limbs; whether she wore the remains of breeches or a dress, he could not tell. Her hair straggled to the lower part of her back in a haystack thatch whose color defied guessing. The grime did not disguise the scars lining her arms and legs. When he watched her running from the soldiers before, he never thought her feet might be bare. She shivered and glowered at him again.

Tavis took off his color shifting cloak, then carefully draped it over her shoulders.

"Wait," she protested, green eyes wide.

He shook his head, "No, you need it more than I. We have no other clothes to give you."

Ghedlyn had sat forward on her knees by the fire, hands to the ground. Between her fingers, she held a piece of wood which she used to scratch peculiar symbols into the mushy earth. Every so often, a trail of water would leak down the hill and streamed over her efforts, but she kept on without noticing. She might fill the entire hollow with those scrawlings before she exhausted herself to the point of asleep.

Tavis chuckled. At least her fear had abated enough to permit her return to her single-minded pursuit. He opened a saddle bag and found a packet of dried beef left over from their village stop. He forced a piece into Ghedlyn's free hand, which went without a look into her mouth. He put another piece into the insensate fingers of the woman with the collar. Finally, he passed the remains to Maray, "Here, a little bit left."

The girl accepted uncertainly, "What will you eat?"

"Nothing it seems," Tavis sighed, seating himself, "rabbit tomorrow, perhaps."

Maray stared across the fire at Tavis. The warder grinned slightly and gestured her to eat. She took small bites, her eyes straying every so often to the working Aes Sedai. Ghedlyn veritably flew through her ministrations, wood rasping across earth. Tavis felt from her a growing excitement.

"Tell me about these Seanchan," Tavis asked, sparing a glance for Ghedlyn's deft hands soaring over the ground. "About that collar."

"_Sul'dam_ use it to control _damane_," Maray glared at the ground. "It is called an _a'dam_."

"The women in gray are _damane_?" he asked.

Maray nodded carefully, "Seanchan make slaves of every woman they find who can channel. Put the _a'dam_ on them and treat them like animals. Bloody _sul'dam_ make women into weapons. Every woman they find who is able."

"Erroneous," Ghedlyn interjected abruptly, not glancing up from her scribing. It could be difficult sometimes to know what she responded to, but she continued in her stilted monotone, "I can feel it in her. This woman here can supply semiphase delay while pseudo-linked. It made an asymmetry when I saw channeling from... from... from the _damane_."

Maray glanced at Tavis, "Pseudo-linked?"

Tavis faced Ghedlyn, "I'm afraid that made little sense Ghedlyn Aes Sedai. Could you please explain more carefully."

With a stray finger, still absorbed in her scribbles, Ghedlyn absently touched the silver leash and the bracelet end of the _a'dam_, "Metal here contains a weave. It is a link, but it is not -a maybe link, a pseudo-link. It has the same dynamical symmetric properties as sisters joining weaves to channel in a circle, but is forcibly directional. Each sister in the circle reinforces phases to increase channeling intensity in non-linear fashion. A link cannot form unless all participants form a _saidar_ phase space. A pseudo-link cannot form unless both participants form phase space. It is here..." she pointed to a particular string of symbols before her, as if anyone would understand what she referred to.

"What is she saying?" Maray demanded, "that made no better sense."

The warder slowly nodded, understanding what his Aes Sedai had said. It occurred to him that he had spent too many years looking over her shoulder, "She means that both _sul'dam_ and _damane_ must be able to channel to make this _ter'angreal_ work."

Maray stared at him incredulously, "That cannot be. _Sul'dam_ are treated like queens, _damane_ like pets. They turned Ebou Dar upside down and put the collar on every woman they could find who can channel. Just snapped it on and dragged them away." Her eyes defocused as her voice broke.

Tavis looked consideringly at the _sul'dam_ lying in the back of the hollow, brushing his chin with the tips of his fingers. "And they were trying to collar you."

The mud ensconced girl gave a faint shrug, "I am useless. I cannot do anything."

"Three women channeling," Tavis muttered to himself. Ghedlyn had lapsed back into the silence of her work and did not appear ready to offer any further pearls of wisdom, "one wild. Maray, did these Seanchan put their _a'dam_ on your sister?"

Green eyes flashed wide at him, then looked sharply away. "Yes," she wrapped herself closely in the color shifting cloak and lay with her back to the fire. Her stifled sobbing begged no further discourse.

Tavis breathed a sigh. It explained a lot. Retrieving a small sewing kit from the saddle bag, he heaved off his gray and brown tunic, intent on the blood stained hole. He had ignored the glancing slice from the seanchan weapon, but he could not afford a gaping shirt with the steadily increasing cold. The warder knew a good deal of tailoring, since he typically mended both Ghedlyn's clothing and his own. He had even clothed them both when they set out, in tans, browns and grays in an effort to help camoflage the woman he was protecting. She still insisted on wearing the white fringed cloak. At least the white color was relatively innocuous.

As he stitched, he periodically scanned the night and opened his ears to the sounds beyond the fire crackling. Out from under the skin sheltering them against the pattering rain, low clouds passed like ghosts through the weak cast of fire light. Once Ghedlyn finally exhausted herself, he would take a post outside to spend the night watching. Despite the flood, despite all the mire wiping away tracks from horses, he had a nagging sense that they were still coming. He could not explain the feel by any cognitive means, he just knew from long experience what to expect.

"This _ter'angreal_ is imperfect," Ghedlyn said.

He glanced over at her. She no longer scratched arcanum into the ground, but sat holding the bracelet end of the _a'dam_ leash. He could see her muddy serpent ring glimmering from her finger in the fire light as she turned the circular piece over and over in her hand. "What," Tavis asked, "how do you mean?"

"The weave does not balance," her deep brown eyes looked vaguely up, but did not meet his, "in use, the link will oscillate eccentrically at a high resonant frequency."

"And what does that mean?" he set his sewing down for a moment to listen.

Ghedlyn tilted her head. One of her hands toyed nervously with a strand of her long, black hair, "The _ter'angreal_ is not perfect. The oscillation could be removed with an imbedded _saidin_ counter-weave. Such a weave must not have been available when this _ter'angreal_ was crafted. Most logically, it must not have been made in the Age of Legends, when usage of _saidin_ was common. One can conclude that it is a new _ter'angreal_, created since that time."

"Hold on. Are you saying that these Seanchan make _ter'angreal_?" Tavis realized.

"It is very probable," Ghedlyn confirmed with a bob of her head. "But, I do not know. Additionally, because the required counter-weave is not present, the link is subject to interference at the resonant frequency. Under most circumstances, it will not be noticable, but it might be possible to fabricate conditions where it becomes significant. I must think about this."

"If it is flawed, why would the Seanchan use it to make a weapon out of women who channel? As a weapon, the _a'dam_ must be reliable." Tavis gestured to the _sul'dam_, "That woman is a fighter, I'm sure of it. The Light knows, you don't want to trust a shoddy weapon when you are on the butcher's field. That is my personal experience."

"I do not know," the Aes Sedai admitted. "I must consider further," her eyes drooped wearily, but she blinked them back open.

"Aes Sedai have not made _ter'angreal_ since the Age of Legends," Tavis remarked. "If the Dragon has been reborn, that kind of a skill could be very useful for Tar'mon Gai'don."

Ghedlyn nodded quickly, "It is important that I see how the Seanchan make this _ter'angreal_. We must meet with them, so that I can see."

Tavis chuckled, "Lady, do you have the slightest idea how insane that sounds?"

She stared at him blankly, penetrating brown eyes meeting his for that one time in ten thousand. That one look, so rarely used, penetrated him so deeply that he felt as if flayed of his skin.

"Right," he drawled, covering his shiver, "you think about that _a'dam_ stuff, give me a month or two to think about how to do this."

"We must go soon."

"They are hunting us now," Tavis responded, "soon may not be a choice."

"We must go," she insisted.

He let out a sigh and fended her off with his hands, "We will go, just calm down about it. At the very least, do me a favor and get some sleep so that you can think about it just a little more clearly. Going against them directly is not a smart move."

----

"They are no longer moving ahead," the _sul'dam_ bowed with the news. "Probably bedded for the night."

Seilara's burnished hazel eyes narrowed, "Are you sure this is the truth? You were lied to before."

"Absolutely, commander," Eashin adjusted the _a'dam_ locked to her wrist. She leaned over to pet the _damane_ who lay on the ground at her feet, "I would stake my honor on it now."

"How far?" the black-haired Seanchan battle commander demanded.

"Maybe as far as four leagues," Eashin shrugged, "it is not easy to be specific."

"If we struggle through this watershod mess all night, they will be ready to leave with the morning sun before we can reach them," Seilara turned away grumbling, "If only we had _Ghrolm_ or _Torm_. Can we call support from the Fists of Heaven?"

A warrior standing nearby bowed and slurred, "Unlikely commander. Through this peasoup? We have no word if they are even flying."

"Very well," Seilara spat in anger. The day just kept getting worse, "We march through the night."

"As you wish," her petty officer darted off to his men with a quick salute. She could hear him sloshing through the mud in the dark, headed toward a crowd of smoldering torches.

"If I may, commander," Eashin bowed her head, "they will know when we are coming."

"One difficulty at a time. We can deal with that once we close their lead."

End Chapter 2

This story is copyright Greg Smith 2005

Please do not use any part of it without my permission.


	3. Chapter 3: Into the Lurch

As always, with greatest respect to Robert Jordan. I own no part of the Wheel of Time and make no claim to. For everybody who has read my work so far, thank you very much! I will try to keep the quality good, though I am short of time now with the resumption of the school year. If I do anything here that you don't like, either to the characters or the WOT world, please forgive me; this story is written exclusively for entertainment on my part. The details of the WOT world are so intricate that it's hard to be absolutely perfect, and the characters found here are denizens of the sidelines since they will never actually be seen in the real books.

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Weaving Luck 

Chapter 3: Into the Lurch

By viggen

Through the night the rains fell in a constant tapping, evolving drips that ran off the oiled skin strung up as shelter. Marayna pretended to sleep, the Warder's color shifting cloak wrapped around her for warmth. The cloudless, punishing sun from the day before had been blown out like a candle, replaced by a raging tempest out to scour away the entire world. She shivered as the mid-summer heat slipped into memory more quickly than seemed possible. The tiny fire in the middle of the hollow helped dull some of the chill, but not nearly enough for her to entirely ignore it. Whenever the Warder came back to lay more tinder on the fire, Marayna squeezed her eyes shut and made herself breathe deeply. She could not say where he found wood dry enough to burn, but he did.

The Warder and his Aes Sedai did not match her notion of what they were supposed to be. She knew Aes Sedai as untouchable women. They walked tall and serene and radiated a powerful aura that warned against even the slightest misstep. They were majestic to the point of inspiring awe. Their Warders were always lean, deadly men with the cadence of wolves and the vision of falcons, seeing every corner, knowing every danger. People like that could be picked out of a crowd at a glance, which was why Aes Sedai advised royalty more or less for fun and nobody dared mess with a Warder unless they were bored of living. Before the Seanchan came, Marayna had gotten plenty of opportunities to see Aes Sedai wandering Ebou Dar; she knew what the serpent ring looked like and expected the lavish clothing.

If Marayna had not seen Tavis dispatch six men single-handedly, she would never have believed he was a Warder, not even when he still wore the cloak he had given her. His gray hair made him too old, his lined face too jovial and his lack of weaponry far too benevolent. If she had passed him on the street in the Mol Hara, she probably would have tried to pick his pocket. He was a large enough man to scare away most footpads on principle, but not visibly a brute or a killer. However, his bluish-green eyes gazed very deeply, no matter how gentle his smile.

The Aes Sedai herself, Ghedlyn, was an enigma. Without the ageless face, she belonged in an asylum. With the ageless face, she belonged someplace on the other side of the world -in an asylum. Marayna did not understand most of what the woman said when her mouth opened, as if she were speaking in tongues. It occurred to her, perhaps for the first time ever, that some women probably needed to be fit with an _a'dam_ just to keep them from doing themselves harm. She chastised herself for that thought; Ghedlyn had yet to show even an ounce of cruelty. What bothered Marayna most was that the word "meek" simply did not belong in the same sentence as the name "Aes Sedai." Despite her peculiarity, if Ghedlyn pulled up her hood to hide her agelessness, the small, faintly brass-skinned woman would have vanished into a crowd by sheer lack of grandeur.

Together, seen randomly on the street, this Aes Sedai and her Warder could have passed as a middle aged husband shepherding his gloomy wife.

Marayna pretended to sleep, bundled in the cold. The Warder saw through her too easily with his sharp eyes and the unusual Aes Sedai seemed only to feed his deductions. If she feigned, Marayna thought perhaps she could hide herself from them for a time longer. If it had been any Aes Sedai but this one, would they have known her immediately? Between kinswomen, Seanchan, Atha'an Miere and Aes Sedai, she had had more than enough of channeling women.

She knew the Seanchan were coming. She could feel them out there, growing steadily closer. She could feel the pain, as if being flagellated her whole body over, could feel her skin pealing free in a pot of boiling oil. A hundred awful things she could feel coming ever closer. She bundled herself tighter and set the sensations out of her mind, set the pain aside even as it blistered through her. With distance it was easier, but the distance was closing. If she threw off the cloak and ran, the Warder would have her on the instant, but she wanted to run.

The night passed in fits and starts. She remembered a jigsaw puzzle of moments with water dripping or dancing shadows from the flickering fire. The Warder lurked awake throughout, in and out of the small shelter. Marayna remembered shards of his broad, tired face staring down at her in contemplation. When she forgot herself, she dozed.

She gasped in agony and awoke, flames burning through to her bones. Her breath came out in sharp, punctuated rasps. The sensation had been so real and close. Her heart thundered in her ears.

Transluminous gray reached through the low hanging clouds in a vague announcement of morning. Rain continued to fall in a lulling rhythm. Branches of the forest dripped and water streamed over everything in sight. The edge of the color shifting cloak soaked through from a rivulet running into the hollow, causing her to shiver. She propped herself up on her elbows and blinked sleep from her eyes. Blackened remains from the fire still smoked. The two horses stood beside the hollow, heads down under the drenching, soft whinnies and grunts traded to each other.

The Aes Sedai and Warder stood out in the drizzle, well away from the shelter. Marayna could hear his baritone voice carrying without being able to distinguish his words. The hood of her white fringed cloak raised, the Aes Sedai gazed into the distance and answered whatever he told her with a word or two.

Tavis raised his voice, "This is woolheaded. I refuse."

But she was insistent.

He continued to shake his head.

Making certain that the Ghedlyn Sedai and Tavis still conversed, Marayna wrapped herself more closely in the cloak and crawled across to the hollow. She grabbed the _sul'dam_ in her rumpled blue dress by the shoulder and rolled her onto her back. The woman did not fight her -but regarded her instead with fearful blue eyes slung with bags from lack of sleep. "Marayna..." she whispered in a shaking voice.

"How the tides have turned, Dobiene," Marayna stretched a hand out and touched the _a'dam_ on the woman's neck. "I had no idea that these actually worked on a _sul'dam_."

Dobiene stared back at her in fright before finding any nerve, "You know there is no distance you can run that they cannot find you."

"They are coming," Marayna agreed, "and when they get here, they are going to lock the collar on my throat, on that crazy Aes Sedai's, and that one there on your's is going to stay put. Maybe they'll let their three new _damane_ share a room."

"It just cannot be," Dobiene replied, shaking, "it cannot be. There must be some mistake. If you will just take this off of me..."

"Take it off of you and what?" Marayna interrupted her, "Do you think things will just go back to normal? You belong wearing it now, just like me. Just like her. When they get here, they'll make a _damane_ out of you. Come to think of it, if that Warder had not brought you here, you probably would be in a gray dress already. What do you think your new name will be when your _sul'dam_ decides?"

The woman shook trying to contain her sobs. Tears streamed from her eyes over a face already beat red, "It is a mistake, they'll know it."

"Then why can you not take it off? Ghedlyn Sedai and Tavis left you alone pretty much all night; you had time," Marayna pointed out. "Or maybe you spent the whole night trying to puke your guts out or fighting a headache. I am no fool, you cannot even pick the bracelet up."

Dobiene closed her eyes and tried to turn away, too weak in her stupor even to fight, "What do you want? Does this give you pleasure?"

Laughing softly, deliberately, evilly, Marayna hissed in her ear, "You have no idea at this moment how satisfied I am. But, what I want is to get out of here, and I want you to help me."

Shuddering, Dobiene shook her head. She could not speak through her weeping.

"If you were smart, you would help," Marayna told her, touching the smooth cord of the metallic leash. "How long do you think it will take that Aes Sedai to figure out that she can get whatever secrets she wants out of you just by wearing this bracelet? You are lucky they have never met a Seanchan before and do not know exactly how your little toy works."

"I do not know anything she wants," Dobiene protested. Her blue eyes clenched tightly and bled copious tears.

"But she'll have to actually ask you to find out for sure," Marayna drew the warder's cloak a little more tightly around her shoulder and glanced to see that Tavis and Ghedlyn were still out conversing. "The Aes Sedai are supposed to be harmless because of their three oaths, but do you think a lunatic can decide what her oaths even mean? I do not want to know, for one."

"Light," Dobiene whined, "it just cannot be."

"Maybe I should snap that _a'dam_ around my wrist," Marayna suggested, "have your help whether you want to give it or not. My own personal _damane_..."

Dobiene's eyes went wide as the notion sank in and her face became pasty white.

"I can just snap it on," Marayna picked up the bracelet end and opened the catch on the smooth metal loop.

"No, please!" Dobiene begged in a sharp whisper, grasping at Marayna's forearm in desperation, "I don't want to be collared. You know it can't be true, you must take it off. Please, no... please... please."

"When the chance comes," Marayna told her, "and you help me get away from these two, I'll think about releasing you. If you dream of betraying me, I will tell them exactly what they can learn from you by using the _a'dam_."

Dobiene wept and nodded.

----

"This is woolheaded," Tavis insisted to Ghedlyn, "we should have packed and left on the instant of first light."

"We must not," Ghedlyn stiltedly responded, her dark brown eyes searching past the Warder. In her mind, she could feel a brimming anxiety welling from him. Her own fear reflected back at her, the intensity of it magnified ten-fold. She wanted to crawl into the hollow and bury her head in the deepest part. If only she could.

She thought again about the leash-bracelet-collar locked onto the blond woman's neck. Ghedlyn's precious hours asleep had overflowed with related calculations of similar potential structures in the power. If she could just figure out how it all fit into the steady-state. The logic suggested a whole host of relationships between Aes Sedai circle-links, Aes Sedai/Warder links and this _a'dam_ pseudolink. She even envisioned the potential of a balanced woman-woman multi-link that lacked female resonance and the possibilities of a male _saidin_ counterweave equivalent to the _saidar_ warder link. The theory could be sound. Her rumination about the figures was all that kept her from running away for her life.

"Aes Sedai?" she jerked out of her reverie when Tavis spoke into her ear and touched her shoulder. "A hundred things could go wrong. If they marched through the night, they could be here very soon. When that happens, we will be in this mess deeper than we can get back out. I am only one man. I can protect you only if we run, now. The girl has every reason to run with us. Light, she probably would've run a couple times in the night while you slept, had I not come frequently to check the fire. The _sul'dam_ has every reason to run with us as well; that has to be why she has been so withdrawn. The one time I tried to speak to her last night, the one time she actually rolled over to see where she was, she immediately hid away on herself and pretended she had not been noticed. When she is ready to talk to us, I would be willing to bet, with the collar around her neck, she faces the same slavery as the girl. If I take the _a'dam_ off her, she will run like a tavern girl from a rapist on the moment. She is that frightened. The collar is the only reason she is with us. How this _a'dam_ _ter'angreal_ makes it so that she won't move I cannot begin to imagine..."

"I must see how the pseudolink is forged," Ghedlyn explained once again, for perhaps the tenth time, hoping he would eventually see the importance. She blinked several times and half met his gaze, though not quite. "It is intrinsic to my work. I must see. With this, the logic may all finally self-support."

"Sometimes," he growled angrily, "I think your work is foolishness..." He abruptly stopped, "Listen..."

A lone, mournful keening note rose to the south, peaking above the patter of still falling rain. The howling song was joined momentarily by a second and third, punctuated sharply by a staccato of yelps. Then, silence.

"Dogs," the Warder turned back toward the shelter slung to the side of the hill, "we have to go, right now."

Ghedlyn tipped her head back so that the rain spattered her face, eyes closed. She relaxed, a flower bud facing toward the sky, waiting. The sun of _saidar_ flashed down onto her as she embraced the source. She drank in the sweetness, feeling the world grow vibrant and clear until she could sense every droplet of water striking the ground, sense every eddy of breeze and sense even the miniscule crinkling motions in swaying tree branches. She filled herself deeply in the ecstasy of the coursing river right up to the brink. The utter joy and happiness caused her jaw to go slack. It dulled her ingrained fear, suppressing it into the distance outside of the cresting wonderment. She embraced the source as she had her mother in those age-old memories. Long conditioning finally kicked in and she forced herself away from drawing any deeper. Pain came somewhere beyond that.

Opening with flows of spirit and water, she stitched a weave that settled in around her. It tightened onto her body beneath her clothes and into her skin so that she could barely feel it. It had to be just so; each thread placed so that the gaps in _saidar_ were also properly placed. Her hours calculating the dynamics of this weave required it to be precise. Many weaves she knew could be swiped together in a heartbeat, but new ones, complicated ones, demanded conscious care so as not to buckle or rip apart before they were complete. Depending on the stresses in its fibers, a buckling weave could burn out her ability to channel, or explode and kill everyone around her. Because of how dangerous forming a truly new weave could be, very few Aes Sedai ever attempted it. Ghedlyn rode the edge, flying through the unknown guided by logical deduction and pure experience. She channeled flows she had carefully planned and looped them together so that they meshed exactly as she had foreseen they should, in a pattern perhaps never attempted before in any age of the world. Finally, she inverted the weave and tied off its flows. Under continuous stress, it would eventually collapse, but she thought the decay rate would give her time enough.

Tavis ripped out the stakes holding up the skin and raveled it into a roll. The girl, Maray, and the yet unnamed _sul'dam_ stared up at him in surprise. Tavis dropped the roll of skin into the girl's arms, turning immediately to gather his saddle bags. Ghedlyn saw him fix a sharp eye on the blond haired _sul'dam_, "You came dead weight and we were kind enough to leave you be, but I can ill-afford to drag you any longer. Will you carry yourself? I can leave you here for your fellow Seanchan if you wish. Or you can ride out with us of your own free will. While I had hoped we might speak about what you said yesterday, I fear the Wheel weaves as it will. What is your choice?"

The woman regarded him with reddened eyes, her short blond hair a straggling mess. She sniffed through a clogged nose. She fingered the collar at her neck, "The collar... if you..."

Maray lifted the bracelet on the other end of the leash with her free hand, "Will you go along?"

Tavis glanced at the grime encrusted girl. Ghedlyn blinked several times.

"I... I... I... will go with you," the _sul'dam_ stammered, her eyes fluttering. She sat on her knees beside where the fire had burned in the hollow. Her blue dress soaked up wetness from the drizzle.

The warder draped his saddle bags onto the tall, black Farstrider, who nodded his head and whickered. Tavis stroked the horse's mane and whispered something to the animal. Finally, he spoke to the _sul'dam_, "If you do anything to compromise the safety of my charge, I will kill you."

Ghedlyn swallowed hard.

"You two take Lorentz," Tavis took the roll of skin from the girl and pointed toward Ghedlyn's dun colored mount, "Ghedlyn will ride with me on him." He patted Farstrider.

The tiny Domani Aes Sedai struggled to find the right words. She had to speak quickly, she knew she needed to, but she could not find the right thing to say. After he helped the girl and the _sul'dam_ onto the other horse, Tavis grabbed Ghedlyn's hand and dragged her toward his own horse. With a wordless yelp, Ghedlyn jerked her fingers from his. She drew herself up, backing slowly away. She did not know how else to refuse.

Tavis turned on her questioningly, his wet gray hair streaming over his round, kindly face and sharp blue eyes. Ghedlyn took another step in the opposite direction. "What is this?" he demanded.

Ghedlyn shook her head, refusing to meet his gaze. "Here. It must be here."

"This is not smart," Tavis came toward her. She rarely realized how wide his shoulders actually were, or the thickness of his arms. In anger, the man could probably uproot a tree. "I cannot leave you in this sort of danger. You won't survive it!"

"It must be here," she whispered. "It must be here. You must go." Not knowing what else to do, she channeled. Ghedlyn spun thick cords of air which she looped around her warder to lift him bodily off the ground.

"Aes Sedai!" the big man cried out in fury as he was deposited bluntly into his saddle. "I have to protect you!"

A few thready howls and yelps drifted through the intermittent trees. Behind them rose the sounds of men shouting to one another.

"Go," Ghedlyn begged him. "Three days. Remember, please. Three days."

Grabbing up Farstrider's reins, he physically shook with rage, "This is not sane!"

"Go," the small woman pleaded again. She channeled a trickle of air and flicked the horse in the rump. Farstrider whinnied, rearing to flail his hooves. Astride, Tavis glared down at her.

He gave a snort, "Go! She will buy us time!" Tavis heeled Farstrider into motion and smacked Lorentz into following on the way past. The blue dressed _sul'dam_ sat behind the dirty, tattered girl in the saddle of the dun mare. The girl, Maray, held low to the reins, the warder's color shifting cloak fanning up behind her. The _sul'dam_ grabbed tight to the girl, but cast Ghedlyn a teary look over her shoulder as the two horses thundered off around the low rising hill. Tavis rode with his head held high and did not glance back.

Ghedlyn could feel her warder's anger surging through the bond. She wondered if he would ever fully understand or forgive. Sometimes he got so angry that it curled her toes.

Standing wrapped in her white fringed cloak, the Aes Sedai turned to face the forest alone. Her knees shook with fear that glossed around the worldliness of _saidar_ that held her. She would give her warder a chance to escape. At the very least, she would protect his retreat with her sacrifice. If only she could decide exactly how to do that.

Wet, ruffled gray wolf-hounds with short docked tails came through the trees in twos or threes. They bounded on lengthy shanks with flowing full-body strides, their tongues lolling as they yelped to one another and ran. As long and tall as their bodies were, they could probably match a horse for speed. Ghedlyn had never seen dogs quite like them before. The breed had a distinctly foreign feel that she did not know except as a texture of strangeness.

Feeling sorrow, Ghedlyn allowed her eyes to narrow and her head to tilt slightly to the side. _Saidar_ almost always knew what to do as quickly as she could think of it. She reached out with conservative flows of spirit, air, water and a touch of fire. The weave danced into being and enveloped the lead dog charging toward her. It gave a funny bark and crashed headlong onto its face in mid-stride. Ghedlyn leaped out with the weave several more times, dropped one dog, then another, then another. "...I think maybe..." she whispered to herself as she worked. If she made the symmetry of the weave a little different. If she altered the flows this way rather than that way. If she laced it through this part of the dog just a little differently than before. If she removed those strands and used _saidar_ just a bit differently. She became so utterly engrossed in refining the method of this particular weave that she almost did not realize that no more dogs were approaching her. Gray bodies littered the ground.

Ghedlyn blinked. Twenty seven dogs! Three sets of nine! Had any slipped past her? She did not know.

The first dogs lay panting on the ground, their eyes spinning in their sockets. Several managed to shakily recover their feet, but could only walk in dazed circles whining or crying. Several came up growling and foaming, immediately laying into each other with bear-like roars and flashing teeth. Ghedlyn cupped her ears against the sound of dogs biting into one another, cringing at flying spittle or blood. Still other hounds, the last she had brought down, managed to find their feet, and darted off at a loping run back in the direction they had come.

Men in colorful lacquered armor emerged through the trees. They wore fearsome helmets shaped like insects or demonic beasts. "Heel, heel," one called as he ran, making a hand gesture at the hounds charging back in his direction. "Heel! Heel!" he shouted, but the dogs sprinted in at him all the faster. One lunged at the man growling, white teeth flickering even far enough away from Ghedlyn to see it. Two dogs brought down one of the soldiers while another clubbed a dog aside and recovered enough from the unexpected attack to draw his sword.

"It was defense," Ghedlyn whispered to herself in mortification, "defense. Not against oaths. Not against." She wanted to hide.

"_Morat'canine_ something is wrong with this light-blinded beasts!" men defended themselves with flashing steel. "Watch out, they are biting!" The dogs and their cloven pieces rapidly fell.

"The _marath'damane_!" one soldier pointed with his sword, "she is here!" Other men were appearing between the trees. "Archers!"

Ghedlyn trembled. Men. Facing her. Bringing out bows and arrows and crossbows. She knew crossbows.

"Do not kill her, she is valuable!" a woman ordered in a slurred accent.

"Ashes to that," one soldier spat, "it is her or us!"

Ghedlyn could not stop her knees from knocking. She felt so much fear. _Saidar_ almost slipped away from her. Dimly, she considered that her ultimate objective was for naught if they managed to kill her. She wished she had allowed Tavis to drag her away.

Soldiers with tall bows strowed into the open where she could see them. They fit shafts of wood to their strings and drew feathered fletchings to their cheeks.

Ghedlyn formed a simple weave of air. Wind whipped around her in a flurry of gusts that bubbled out in all directions, upward and sideways.

The first flashing broad heads were on their way in the next instant as bowstrings twanged sharply against wood. Other men from behind the cover of trees launched as well, sending a hail of feathered shafts flying at the solo Aes Sedai. Ghedlyn's wind interfered with the flight, pushing projectiles outward in curves that flew wide of her to all sides. She found herself shaking to her bones when an arrow destined for her heart arched downward in the wind and slammed into the water logged ground at her feet.

A _sul'dam_ and _damane_ stood back by a distant tree, barely visible. The woman in gray did not embrace the source, though she and her master watched intently what Ghedlyn was doing.

"Bring her down!" men continued to advance beneath the waves of arrows that flew awry. They were coming regardless.

Ghedlyn tried a new trick. Lacing strands of fire into her sheath of protective winds to help keep the air moving and water to disperse the unnecessary heat, she tied off the swirling flows so that she would not have to put effort into maintaining them. Then, with a simplistic mesh of air, she pushed open a massive hole in the atmosphere in the shape of a cone such that the wide end faced away from her. The weave was not complex, but the sheer force of the atmosphere weighing in on itself as it tried to fill the hole required a good deal of Ghedlyn's full strength. This technique she knew well; she had invented and mastered it facing Trollocs. She did not make it as strong as it could be made, though she knew how to make it such that it performed as she wanted. She fired it off by simply releasing the weave.

Air slammed in to fill the conical void, snapping closed first at the pointed end in a wave that ran out toward where the widest part of the vacuum had been. From Ghedlyn's side, near the point, the effect crashed like the roll of thunder from a lightning stroke nearly hard enough to knock her off her feet. From the other side, the closing shock reinforced itself almost into a solid wall of noise.

The traveling shock wave flew as fast as a voice through the air, blowing up rainwater, mud and even snapping branches from trees. Men blew off their feet like toy boats tossed by a towering wave. Those thrown aside lay where they fell. Right at the focus, the pressure wave could instantly kill, but Ghedlyn had not let any of the soldiers in that close. At a short distance, the shock brought immediate unconsciousness, and nausea from broken eardrums. Farther away, felled men struggled with disorientation and a few vomited in the mud. Not one of the soldiers remained fully afoot and none of the archers continued to fire on her.

Ghedlyn turned to run and collided headlong with a man in green-tinted armor. During her fight, she had not seen him coming. From Ghedlyn's side, he had barely felt the pressure wave. _Saidar_ left her in a whisper, bringing down the usual subdued absence. Ghedlyn tried to scream, but the flat of his sword met the side of her head in a full-on swing.

The flash of stars exploding in her vision was all she knew before the world went dark.

End Chapter 3

This story is copyright Greg Smith 2005

Please do not use any part of it without my permission.


	4. Chapter 4: Dog Pack

For everybody who is following this story, thanks! Between Electromagnetics and Analytical Mechanics, I've been short on time for writing. This chapter has followed me the whole semester. Hopefully after finals are done, I'll have a little more time to continue. As always, I own no part of the Wheel of Time and I give thanks to Robert Jordan for all his labor.

Weaving Luck 

Chapter 4: Dog Pack

By viggen

Anger nearly blinded Tavis as he rode. He should have insisted Ghedlyn come. He should have dragged her by that long, lustrous black hair and tied her to the saddle. Facing anything alone, her innate stupidity would reign supreme. Her judgment could not keep her alive. That was his job; his duty and his oath, and not merely to her.

A soaked branch flicked past his face and he saw it in only enough time to strike it aside with a snarl. Farstrider extended dramatically beneath him, vaulting over a freshly revived stream. Low hanging clouds scurried along rolling hills filled with dying grasses and brush. Formerly parched trees clawed at the pair of horses struggling across the now treacherous ground.

Tavis knew he should have dragged Ghedlyn to Salidar when they were close to it days ago. Maybe he should have forced her to return to the White Tower. On the other hand, the news of the rift among the Aes Sedai profoundly disturbed him. What might they do to each other if Ghedlyn ended up in the mix? Any conflict involving his ward as anything but a bystander turned instantly more complex -even among her sisters. His central duty was to keep her alive and free to complete her work at all costs. He safeguarded her against friends and foe alike. Three days away from her took his breath from him.

In three days time... If he could wait three full days.

Farstrider juked over a low outcrop, spraying mud from a pool under his hooves. Tavis nearly lost his balance in the stirrups, surprised Ghedlyn's indisposition had bitten him so acutely. In another life -it seemed- one of his wards had died on him. The oblivion of that day clung to him and dragged at him, even years later. The prospect of facing it again left him wanting nothing but to race back to Ghedlyn's side. It was all he could do to keep Farstrider pointed the opposite direction. Three days.

Lorentz trundled along behind, dun shanks spattered with mud and the two female riders wide-eyed at the grueling pace set by the warder. Maray clutched Tavis' color-shifting cloak around her shoulders as she shivered. The blond _sul'dam_ hung low behind the girl, her cheeks bleached white with fear. Maray darted quick glances at Tavis and sometimes behind them. He could see a quizzical intensity in the girl's bright green eyes.

A deep, thunderous boom resounded past them. The concussion echoed back on Tavis and the two women from all sides several times in refrain. By the disembodied presence lodged permanently in the corner of his mind, Tavis knew Ghedlyn had started playing some of her more devious tricks. He wished it had not come to this.

He stiffened.

The cold air leaped out too sharply.

"No!" Tavis bellowed when he felt the blow that felled his Aes Sedai. Farstrider reared with a squeal when he inadvertently dug in his heels. The primal fear that had been Ghedlyn receded down to a dull, insensate ache. He fought the urge to turn the horse around. He wanted to be instantly with her. He wanted to prevent that next blow that would wipe her from his life.

He wrenched Farstrider to a halt and turned the stallion's head. He would go back for her. Lorentz skidded in the mud to follow Tavis' frantic maneuvering.

She still lived. He knew it.

If he hurried.

The warder snarled like a feral animal caught between instinct and domestication. Sitting high in his saddle, he stared back in the direction from which they had come, then off toward where he knew he should be running. _He_ had to remain free and alive for the next three days just so that Ghedlyn would stand a chance.

For some strange reason, while the warhorse pranced beneath him, he found himself thinking of Ghedlyn's smile. He saw it so rarely. The huge man with graying hair and world weary blue eyes remembered the small bronze-skinned Domani on her knees beside an anthill. Even with her ageless face, she stooped like a curious child. She had not quite laughed in delight, but she smiled as ants crawled over her hands. He knew she had not cared what kind of ants they were, only that they swarmed in some pattern that only she could see. He recalled that eternal searching bewilderment she wore from nearly the moment she awoke in the morning until the instant the needs of her body kicked in and forced her to sleep at night. He wished he could see reality from her perspective for just one moment, following that invisible thread of logic through a sea of nonsense. He wished he could understand.

He wanted to be back at her side protecting her, but he also wanted to bow to her wishes. She had conceived this plan, following that same fiber of logic, hoping to finally make that profound intuitive leap she had sought for decades. She had been the one who wanted to wait for the Seanchan, despite the nature of the _a'dam_.

He tried to remind himself that he had been expecting this. She still lived, and so would want to continue her work. Three days. He could not wait three days!

The warder gave a wordless cry of frustration. Maray and the _sul'dam_ both stared at him in uncertainty.

A howl rose behind them in eerie counterpoint to the still-dying thunder from Ghedlyn's struggle. More than one howl. He could hear them searching, calling their positions to one another with yelps and barks. He could sense the size of the pack and feel the mechanics of their hunt.

"Wonderful," he sighed under his breath. Tavis knew the cousins of the wolf, and deeply respected them, no matter how domestic. No other friend so loyal could be such a merciless killer. Every army worth its weight employed dogs in some capacity or another.

"We have to keep on..." he managed gruffly, his baritone voice deeper than usual. "We have to find safety."

Snapping her reins, Maray turned Lorentz away and heeled the mare hard. "Hiya!" Lorentz sprang into action.

"Wait!" Tavis called after her, "we have to head this direction. The dogs will catch us if we ride that way."

The grime encrusted girl wearing the color shifting cloak did not respond. The _sul'dam_ held on behind her, eyelids squeezed tightly closed.

Tavis had no choice but to follow. He kicked Farstrider after them and forced every ounce of strength out of his faithful steed. "Wait! We cannot go that way!"

He could see Maray crouched low in the saddle, but she did not deign to glance at him or acknowledge his calls. Tavis raced Farstrider after the two women through sleeting rain, intending fully to draw up alongside and confiscate the reins from the panicked girl. Tangles of brush snapped and flew in the wake of the two galloping horses. Tavis crouched low on the black horse's back and urged more speed. He could hear Lorentz' labored breathing ahead. He slowly managed to close the lead Maray had opened with her abrupt flight. Since the dun carried not one passenger, but two, Tavis shook his head in amazement that Lorentz persevered so vigorously.

He could hear barking off to their left through the drizzle of rain. Opportunities for a clean escape rapidly dwindled.

Maray had pulled the cloak more completely around her body and lifted the cowl to cover her head. The _sul'dam_ wrapped her arms around the girl as much to hold fast as to gain warmth in the cutting wet. Tavis gradually whittled away the gap. He caught glimpses of loping, gray-furred bodies on four legs between trees, flanking the two thundering horses.

"Slow down and listen to me!" he shouted after Maray and the _sul'dam_ again. If he could buy that one moment when they cut speed to close the distance, maybe he could keep the three of them from being mauled.

Maray answered by pressing herself down against the horse's mane and urging greater speed still. All he could actually see of the girl in the wild gallop were her arms sticking out from under the warder cloak.

A gray body darted across Farstrider's path and forced the horse to dodge aside. Two lithe, gray-furred dogs with cropped tails paralleled the horse, their flowing legs easily matching the speed of Tavis' mount. They nimbly ducked in close to nip at the horse's fetlocks. The distance to Lorentz opened again as the dun mare jerked and pranced through intervening brush.

"Blood and ashes!" Tavis spat as Farstrider ducked narrowly past the trunk of a tree and whinnied at the harassment from the two dogs. He wished faintly for a sword more substantial than the long-knife he wore. Dogs made a good reason to carry bows and swords. When she was around, he generally yielded to Ghedlyn facing this sort of threat. The warder steered Farstrider back onto the path of Lorentz and freed one of his feet from a stirrup to kick at the biting dog. It growled and came around from the other side. They had substantial teeth. He did not know the breed.

Other dogs surrounded Lorentz ahead, but the Seanchan woman shouted something at them that Tavis could not quite make out. Though they flanked Lorentz as eagerly as they did Farstrider, they seemed hesitant to attack.

One thick tree branch flickering past his head gave Tavis an idea. With a grunt, the warder snapped loose the first dead branch he passed within reach. The small fragment he came away with looked more like a toothpick than a bludgeon, so he threw it down hard at one of the dogs struggling to trip his mount. The gray hound yelped and dodged aside, its stubby tail tucked and its ears laid back.

He could see the _sul'dam_ and the girl wearing the queasy-colored warder cloak, both still riding Lorentz, laboring steadily farther into the distance. Farstrider grunted and sailed for one breathless moment over a stump that loomed in their path. The warder held tight with his knees.

The next branch Tavis caught matched his need for weight. "Light forsaken mutt," he swung the branch with one hand and guided the reins of his horse with the other. His initial swing met air as the dog veered aside, then he managed to thump one soundly on its pointed snout when it lunged to bite the ankle of his boot in the stirrup. It cried and fell, but Tavis did not see whether it came back to its feet. Another gray body pressed in from the other side of the horse, joined by another and another.

Tavis wheeled in his saddle and swung the branch down on the beasts in wide arcs. He quickly bloodied the end of the makeshift club. Lorentz did not seem to get any farther away and he did not see any fewer dogs. "Blood and ashes! Bloody ashes."

Lorentz curved around a gully between two hills, the mare's light colored pelt washed out by drafts of fog. Tavis steered Farstrider to follow and was forced to adjust himself in the saddle when the horse skidded onto a flat of mud. Whacking aside yet another dog, he saw the other horse stumble violently in the mire and throw its riders. The blue dressed Seanchan woman and the warder's cloak sailed in a short arc before splashing down in the mud. Lorentz came up kicking and stomping in wild fright, beset from all sides by gray hounds that slinked out of the browned undergrowth between unhealthy trees.

"No!" Tavis bellowed as the dogs advanced. He drew back Farstrider and vaulted bodily off the tall stallion. His preference was to fight afoot and barehanded, but dogs rarely gave the choice. The warder's feet sank into the mud as he landed, though he kept his balance and crouched slightly to root himself. The heavy muscles in his legs made them as immobile as tree trunks. Slippery surfaces could be challenging to fight upon, but his training included that to its core. The knife he normally used to skin rabbits became his tooth against these furred opponents.

No quarter given or received. Without a rider, Farstrider became a well-honed, squealing weapon. A dog caught beneath the hooves of a full grown horse in a lathered rage was one dead dog. Lorentz and Farstrider both gave superb accounts of themselves.

The warder's normally kind face pinched with a shadow of seriousness. He could stare down a stone when the mood struck him and he could endure as long as any dog. This was his element. His wet gray hair matted against his skull, his blue eyes burned with a venomous light. The stains of dirt on his tunic rapidly flowed red. He hated the knife, but he knew full well how to use it. The glinting blade held reverse grip, he laid into anything that came close. Hounds of war gave no mercy, so they did not receive any.

In combat, Tavis settled into a trance-like rhythm. He could sense everything moving around him. A snout biting into his leg was a snout with his blade slashing across it. Strength became inconsequential and bodies could be tossed aside like toys. He did not exactly hold full awareness as he slipped below. With all the pent up frustration Ghedlyn had foisted upon him this day, with the anger still surging through his veins, he simply gave in to the primal allure of violence. The dogs seemed to move slowly in his orbit, silently. Each action to him was nature itself, as necessary and requisite as the slow, steady breaths he now took. He became death incarnate. He did not know how many times he struck and slashed.

He stabbed his blade into the spine of one attacker and left it there. The teeth of a growling mouth seized into his gauntlet encased forearm and the furred body shook him nearly hard enough to throw him to the mud. Not that anything could uproot him. The warder stared coolly down into the fearless hound's brown eyes, then barred his other gauntleted forearm around the back of its head so that it could not disengage its bite. He then rolled his forearms around one another and folded the beast's head over backward with a crack. He let the gray pelt drop with a dull splash to the mud.

No more animals attacked. Gray bodies littered the muddy ground. A distant howl warned of more on the way.

He stood shadowed, soaked, his arms dangling at his sides. He did not know how long he had fought. He bled from rents in his clothing, from numerous bite marks more septic than the wounds given by a clean sword. Tavis came slowly back to himself. Tomorrow, he would hurt like an old man who had run a footrace without training. He did not know how many of these animals he had dropped. It made him sad. He rubbed an elbow and found more blood from wound hiding there.

Three days, she said. Three days. Tavis laughed softly.

Slowly, he retrieved his blade. He looked at the weapon, then at his ripped tunic. He held his arms out from his sides and chuckled again at the shear ridiculousness of it. Without any place to wipe the knife off, he settled for sheathing it bloody.

Had any dogs run away amid the violence? His eyes danced across the trees surrounding the small clearing, searching. They might still be lurking around, somewhere. The soldiers these dogs served were somewhere nearby as well. He could hear other dogs searching, baying to one another in stolid refusal to ever give up. Tavis shook his head wonderingly; he had never been with an army running such a significant dog pack, let alone with an apparently minor detachment. These Seanchan certainly knew how to make the best use of these animals as weapons.

Feeling tenderness in his left leg, Tavis hobbled to Farstrider and gathered the tall horse's reins. "Come on, we have to go," the warder stroked the nervous animal's mane in an effort to calm him. Farstrider's dark eyes continued to roll and he whickered fiercely, but he followed his master without hesitation.

Tavis scanned the trees again when he heard a spate of barking. More of those fur-coated devils were close.

Dun Lorentz had backed away across the mud flat and seemed ready to bolt into the trees, but the mare expressed her training as she waited for a rider.

"We have to be running for it," he announced loudly enough for both women. "There will be trouble yet if we stay here."

The _sul'dam_ lay in the mud, audibly weeping. She made no move to stand. Rips in her stained, tattered blue dress suggested she had not completely avoided a mauling, though she did not seem bloodied. Beside the woman, the warder cloak danced and flowed, merging with the mire; Tavis' experienced eye was the only way he could pick out where it lay. Towing Farstrider behind, Tavis lumbered to where the girl lay. If she were hurt, he did not know what he could do. He had a remedial battlefield skill at healing, though not nearly at the quality of an Aes Sedai's channeling.

"What were you thinking? Running away like that. It could have gotten us all killed," Tavis said to Maray. He lifted the color shifting cloak out of the slog and found... nothing.

No girl!

The gray haired warder's head swung back and forth as he searched the clearing.

Gray furred bodies, but no girl. Not anywhere to be seen.

"Blood and ashes!" He threw the Warder cloak down into the mud.

Face drawn furiously taut, the warder grabbed the length of silver leash still locked around the _sul'dam_'s neck and lifted the woman by it. She gagged and coughed, her fingers hooking between the collar and her neck to keep it strangling her. The powerful warder lifted the much smaller woman until she was forced to dance on her tip-toes like a puppet.

"My generosity has run short. You will answer my questions, or die," he breathed down into the _sul'dam_'s face from where he towered over her. "Nod if you understand me."

She gasped and gurgled.

"NOD!" he ordered.

Her head jiggled up and down in mortal terror.

Tavis lowered her until she could stand flat footed. The blond woman swayed as if about to fall. With one hand, she clutched weakly at Tavis' raised arm for support.

"Where is the child?" he demanded levelly, his apparently lax expression made menacing by his stony gaze.

"Gone," the sul'dam managed. "Long gone."

"When?"

The woman shook her head, her blue eyes watering with fresh tears. She pointed in the direction from which they had come, "Back that way... after she turned the horse from you."

"What!" Tavis exclaimed in incredulous outrage.

"She made me hold that cloak you gave her," the _sul'dam_ mumbled. "She slipped off the horse just before the dogs came. Her luck is... is still with her."

The huge man stared at the _sul'dam_. He could have sworn he had seen the girl still on Lorentz just before the dog attack.

A not too distant howl caused the warder and the subject of his interrogation both to stiffen.

"Blood and ashes!" Tavis glanced around the clearing again. He thought seriously about killing this woman and leaving her body for her fellow Seanchan to find. Still, even in anger, he could not rationalize the act. He had never quite considered himself a murderer. He released his grip on the _a'dam_ and turned away. Lorentz needed tending and he needed to flee on the minute to have any hope of getting to Ghedlyn in three days. Dragging this woman any farther would only cost time he did not have.

The _sul'dam_ followed the silver leash to the ground without the slightest effort to bear herself up. It was as if the weight of the collar simply dragged her with it. "Please help me," she begged in a breaking voice. "Please do not leave."

Tavis finished readjusting the saddle on Lorentz and gave the dun mare a pat. He glanced to the blond _sul'dam_ cowering on the ground, "I am being generous one last time. You have every opportunity to run for it."

"I cannot lift the _a'dam_," the woman pleaded in her slurred accent.

"You stood just fine when we left Ghedlyn," the graying warder pointed out.

"Maray... Marayna lifted the bracelet," the woman said, "I cannot lift it myself."

Tavis realized that she was right. He had not thought about it at the time, but he remembered Maray moving suddenly to catch the _a'dam_ when they were preparing to leave. It occurred to him now that the girl had deliberately masked this _sul'dam_'s inability to travel on her own. "That collar really does make you a tame pet," he exclaimed under his breath to himself.

"Just take it off me," she begged from her knees in the mud.

Under the new slathering of grime, Tavis could see that she had been a proud woman. A lingering aura of regal bearing had not been entirely dissipated from what must have felt like a jarring debasement. The warder could see the signs and had guessed distantly at them before; this woman was used to holding the leash, not wearing it. Under the revelation that the _a'dam_ restricted her from even moving on her own, his first impulse was that she probably deserved it. He had seen this woman trying to lock the very collar she now wore around the neck of a squirming child. His next thought reminded him that Ghedlyn probably now wore a leash such as this. When she awoke, she would not be able to lift herself without the permission of some glorified animal trainer. He fought a renewed impulse to snap this _sul'dam_'s neck.

Lifting the muddy woman as he might cradle a child, Tavis reluctantly set her into Lorentz' saddle. She cried, swallowing her sobs in a silent terror that suggested she understood what passed through the warder's mind even at that very second. She sat on Lorentz shivering when Tavis draped the bracelet of the _a'dam_ onto the horn of Farstrider's saddle.

The warder managed gingerly to mount himself on the black horse. He heeled Farstrider to a trot without a word. Lorentz whinnied and followed just as the silver _a'dam_ leash drew taut between the horses. The _sul'dam_ did not make a sound.

Though barking filtered through the trees every so often, they were left alone. The searching dogs apparently held no interest in the warder or his prisoner.

Aside from the slog of heavy hooves churning down into mud, the rain patter relented to baited drizzle. The air had grown steadily colder and they breathed gouts of fog. Snow might be not far distant. Tavis wondered at the sudden onset of winter after such a long blast of summer. This far south, rains would hold out for a time, but that could soon freeze.

"What is your name?" Tavis asked the sul'dam with a monotonous grunt.

"Dobiene," she answered between the wracked breaths of suppressed sobbing.

The gray haired warder chewed on that for a time. Finally he released a sigh, "What did you say to me when I locked that collar around your neck?"

Dobiene seemed stunned. Her blue eyes, reddened at the rims and bloodshot, stared back at him wordlessly when he glanced at her. "...what?" she croaked, a finger lifted to keep the collar from biting too deeply into her neck from the jostling of the horses.

"What did you say?" he repeated.

She closed her eyes, "I -I was stunned. It just slipped out."

"What exactly?" Tavis pressed.

"I asked... for your help... on the grace of the Light," Dobiene managed.

"In the middle of battle, of an enemy, why!" Tavis asked, "Nobody does that unless they have a dagger hidden up their sleeve."

Her mouth worked and new tears streamed across her face. "It has to be a mistake. It must not be true," she gasped. "It cannot be true."

"Why did you ask me?"

She shook her head in futile hope of casting the memories aside. "When the collar closed, I knew right away," she whispered, "I felt it. No Seanchan would ever take it off me again before my death."

"I will take that collar off," Tavis told her, "when there is no doubt that I can trust you."

The woman in the now tattered and messed blue panel dress jerked a twitching nod.

"In the mean time, you are going to help me keep my ward from the fate you are narrowly avoiding."

"I -I understand," she replied. He could not see whether or not she found any relief in the stay of execution, but he still did not trust her. She blinked her eyes a number of times. Her drawling accent came faintly slurred, "The best way will be to bargain with them. They were not after your woman at all."

"If they were hunting for a harmless child," Tavis assured her, "they can hardly pass up the opportunity to leash a fully trained Aes Sedai. Maray must be able to channel or else they would not want her, but surely a monster like Ghedlyn would present far better prospects."

Dobiene gave a dry snort, "A member of the Blood sent us after your 'harmless child' on pain of all our deaths. If you find Marayna before they do, they will bargain for her."

"What makes Maray so special?" he demanded, half in sarcasm. In his own mind, he could hardly reconcile how the girl could possibly hold such a significant value next to Ghedlyn. He hoped desperately that the Seanchan who now held her would not figure out the exact nature of Ghedlyn's gift.

"Her name is Marayna Binfadil," Dobiene told him, "and she is the most valuable _marath'damane_ on this side of the Aryth ocean. Why else do you think she wanted to run from you just the way she ran from us? It surprised me that she even told you part of her real name -likely she was too exhausted to think of a fake."

"I am not certain I believe that. Why is she valuable?" Tavis asked.

"For the same reason she slipped off this horse without you noticing before the dogs attacked," Dobiene exclaimed, "the same reason she slipped through our grasp four times before we met you. Undoubtedly, the same reason we met you in the first place. Maybe even the reason why this _a'dam_ is working on me when it should not."

"Blaming all that on one girl?" Tavis chuckled, half in malevolence, "you Seanchan are deluded."

"Hardly," Dobiene grumbled, "It's her luck."

The _sul'dam_, whose blue eyes now flashed, went on to tell Tavis a tale that caused his jaw to drop. He debated whether or not he believed her and ended up deciding that not believing would be far too dangerous.

When she finally fell silent, the gray haired warder stared down at the _a'dam_ bracelet on his saddle horn. His skin crawled. He shook his head in disbelief, "Ghedlyn and I should have run the opposite direction at the first sign of danger. I should have forced her to go back to the Tower."

"They will trade for her," Dobiene assured him.

"By the Light of the creator, how could I have landed us in the middle of this? The situation is far worse than you think," Tavis declared unhappily. He flipped matted gray hair off his forehead, "They have the other one already and they are looking for Marayna."

"Of course," the swollen eyed _sul'dam_ said, "I told you as much."

"What they do not realize is that they _also_ have Ghedlyn, even though they might realize soon enough," Tavis said.

"How can she be important to them next to Marayna?" Dobiene asked carefully.

"You met Ghedlyn, however briefly," Tavis pointed out, "tell me she strikes you as typical."

Dobiene stared at him flatly, not understanding his implication.

"Maybe you were inattentive last night," he allowed. "Ghedlyn is not like any other channeling woman. If she becomes involved with this, it will become ten times worse just because of _who_ she is. Adding Ghedlyn to this is like adding fuel oil to fire."

End Chapter 4

This story is copyright Greg Smith 2005

Please do not use any part of it without my permission.


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